A theater grows in Bangor Penobscot Theater director Torres savors decade of change

You’ve heard about the three R’s when it comes to education. For theater, Mark Torres has three A’s.

Affability. Availability. Ability.

“Because this is such a collaborative art form,” said Penobscot Theatre’s producing artistic director, “if you aren’t affable, who needs you? And if you aren’t available, who needs you? And ability? Of course you have to have that.”

With a production of Noel Coward’s high-style comedy “Blithe Spirit,” which previews tonight and opens Friday night, Torres marks his 10th season with Penobscot Theatre. If you look at the record, Torres might be said to have earned an additional A, as in the letter grade, for his expansion of and attention to his work in the past decade. During that time, he has increased subscription rates from 200 to more than 1,200 annually, and one show last year brought in nearly 4,000 theatergoers in a 10-day period. The Maine Shakespeare Festival is Torres’ brainchild, and the purchase of the Opera House more than five years ago was spearheaded by him.

The decade has been bountiful, Torres said one recent morning at a coffee shop in Bangor. He also openly admits that, when he first arrived in Bangor from Texas, where he ran a theater, he didn’t expect to stay this long. He gave himself five years – a reasonable time to evaluate a professional endeavor. After five years, he had grown from a theater in a small Victorian church to having two theater spaces, a major summer festival and a traveling educational program reaching thousands of children in schools throughout the state.

“We’re a small theater budgetarily, but in Maine, we’re a major theater,” he said. “A theater this size in another place wouldn’t be a major player.” Here, Torres paused to quietly

consider the changes he has seen. “A drive through downtown Bangor even 10 years ago was a drive through a despairing landscape,” he added. “That’s not the case now. That’s due to perseverance on the part of a lot of people.”

A persevering man in his own right, Torres’s influence hasn’t stopped at the footlights. He has been a player in city planning as well as in a statewide initiative to increase tourism and economic growth through the arts. He sits on the Maine Arts Commission and is a member of a statewide task force on sustainable tourism. He also travels every year to meet with other Shakespeare festival organizers around the world, and auditions and hires theater professionals from Maine, New York, Boston, Memphis and Los Angeles.

“There is good theater in New York,” said Torres. “But New York is chasing the buck. Ultimately, all art is local, even in New York . No matter where, it’s happening in the room with the artist and the consumer. And it happens only there, by the way. We try to remind our audience that what’s happening at Penobscot Theatre and the Maine Shakespeare Festival is happening only for them. When it’s over, we tear it apart and throw it away and that’s it.”

That’s it, in one way. But every time a technical team strikes a set, another one is waiting in the wings, so to speak.

This season’s regular lineup goes from “Blithe Spirit” to Patrick Hamilton’s “Angel Street,” Paul Rudnick’s “I Hate Hamlet,” “Ken Ludwig’s “Moon Over Buffalo,” and William Gibson’s “The Miracle Worker.” In the center of all that comes the Maine Shakespeare Festival and “Alice in Wonderland,” “As You Like It” and “Macbeth.” During the holiday season, Penobscot Theatre will present the chestnut “A Christmas Carol.”

It’s not a season of themes, said Torres. Instead, the shows are “audience friendly,” with name recognition and provocative titles. The season is designed, he said, “to bring people in. That’s very much on my mind. I want them to come in and to give theater a try.”

To that end, Torres lists a number of performers, directors and designers that he has handpicked to ignite interest and artistry in the shows. He also has kept his eye on local actors – such as Cushing Pagon Samp, an audience favorite who will be in “Blithe Spirit,” which Torres is directing.

So what about the next 10 years?

“If you ask me what I’d like to see, it would be that this organization grows in every way and that the community grows, too,” said Torres. “For those of us who have been around for these years, if we think in terms of doubling what we’ve done in the last 10 years, it’s amazing. But think if that were exponential. Then you’re really talking. It’s possible and doable through the arts and we know this because the changes that have come about happened without an increase in population. Time is the critical factor.”

Time, Torres might add, and the three A’s.

For information about the Penobscot Theatre-Maine Shakespeare Festival season, call 942-3333.